Here’s a history tidbit for you: On this date in 1929, excavation began at a vacant lot on Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The following year the Empire State Building formally opened. In the space of 404 days it had risen from below 350 Fifth Avenue and soared 1,454 feet skyward. At the time it was the tallest building the world had ever seen; a gleaming edifice so inspiring that it became the symbol of New York City itself. Filled with art, and elevators that were the wonder of the age, the building nevertheless cost half as much as had been expected and was finished well ahead of schedule. The accomplishment, and the cooperative spirit that produced it, set a standard for the world to aim at.

Here’s another historic tidbit: It has been 450 days since the four escalators at the Staten Island Ferry’s Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan were put out of service by Hurricane Sandy. Since then, the tens of thousands of commuters and tourists who use the terminal every day have had to trudge up the two-dozen or so stair steps to get to the next boat. Every day, riders are taunted by the wooden enclosure barricading them from the idle escalators. Most days they are baffled by the absence of workers and the persistent lack of visible progress.

The New York City Department of Transportation probably could explain why the process of swapping out some storm-drenched gear is taking so long. But the agency has chosen not to do so.

Oh, there have been excuses aplenty. Unique parts had to be manufactured. Equipment was slow in arriving. The project was hampered by “mechanical delays.” And on and on.

There was a glimmer of hope last September, when some crucial parts were delivered. NYCDOT said at the time that it would take 10 weeks to get the escalators rolling again. That was about 20 weeks ago.

The latest excuse is that the escalators cannot be switched on until the NYC Buildings Department inspects them. The agency reportedly will get around to performing that visit later this month, but nobody in officialdom will venture an exact date.

If Staten Islanders, who make up the bulk of the Ferry’s regular users, are exasperated and cynical about the bureaucracy in general and the future of this project in particular, it is because they have been victimized, time and again, by crazily underestimated project timelines, which city officials try to justify with mealy-mouthed explanations.

Here, by way of example, is one more historic tidbit: In February 1992, work began on rebuilding the elevated Gowanus Expressway. Staten Islanders were assured that the projected 10-year project was “an opportunity” that would improve the commute for motorists and “... may lead to long-term measures to help traffic mobility.”

That was 22 years ago. The project is nowhere near finished. The only “long-term measures” we’ve seen so far are delays, one after another.

The Empire State Building, started and done more than eight decades ago, was an amazing feat then, and is something New Yorkers are still rightly proud of.

The only mega-project to rival the Empire State Building was the World Trade Center. The twin 110-story towers, destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, were completed in less than three years and literally changed the shape of Manhattan.

The iconic towers’ successor, a single, smaller high-rise (it is marginally taller only because of its rooftop antenna) has been more than 13 years in the building, and is only now nearing completion.

Given endless muddles like the escalators and the Gowanus, and the ossified modern-day bureaucracies that manage them, it is sad to contemplate that perhaps New York can no longer muster the can-do spirit to swiftly complete such projects as the Empire State Building.

We hope we are wrong about that, but the conclusion is all but inescapable while trudging up the steps of Whitehall, past the moving stairways that still don’t.